Category Archives: Consumption

I am back at my favorite place – New Zealand. This week, I will conduct sessions for over 20 customers across Wellington and Auckland. New Zealand has always been the first mover for Office technologies. Majority of customers have great infrastructure and the latest tools. I am here to coach them how to increase O365 consumption.

The focus of my sessions is, of course, to maximize the benefits and ROI from the Office 365 investments which the customers have already made. Procurement and deployment is an easy and one-time activity. However, educating large number of users in understanding and applying these new tools and features is a daunting task. I help in this context in two ways: Firstly, I conduct large format sessions, typically in an Auditorium to generate excitement and word-of-mouth awareness creation about the power of Office. Secondly, with specific customers, I work with their IT team, HR and Corporate Communication to create a strategy for internal marketing and sustained efficiency gains. Here are some of the customers I will be covering.

Office 365 Groups helps in simplifying teamwork. Creating the Group is easy. But getting the entire team to utilize it effectively is another matter. This article shows a step by step process of bringing your team together using Groups. Technology is only 50% of the story, rest is psychology!

This article is for IT professionals only. Office templates are created by users. How to make common templates available to all employees (or specific groups)? This can easily be deployed using Group Policy. Here are the approaches available.

Using File Folder / SharePoint Document Library

AD and GPMC is required.

Put all the templates in a central shared folder or a document library.

Here is the recording of my session in Pune DevCon – a gathering of developers in Pune, India. Please pardon me for using Hindi language intermittently. I needed to use local language for maximum impact.

Thanks to Mahesh Mitkari, Mayur Tendulkar, Vikram Pendse and team for arranging a great event. Enjoy!

This is a live recording. Please pardon the background noise and poor video quality.

There are two types of charts. First type is a chart which you create to interpret data more effectively. The second type is more common. These charts are blindly created billions of times everyday – why? Because boss wants it that way!

In this article, I am going to attempt to change the mindset of all users of Charts. Please spend 5 minutes of your time reading this article and trying out a new thought process. I am confident that it will add value to your life.

If you are in-charge of deploying new products in your organization, this article is for you. As usual, a new fashionable word is introduced every year. This year it is Consumption. Read on to find out what it really means to you.

This has been a problem even before Office 365 was introduced. When it comes to ANY office product, there is NOBODY responsible for implementing it fully and ensuring that there is effective utilization.

Photo by W. L. King, Millersberg, Ohio; by courtesy of Military Intelligence Div., General Staff, U.S. Army.

In my opinion this is the worst Worst Practice. The full list is available here. Here I will discuss why phased release is bad and provide a better approach. The primary objective is to increase efficiency across the organization rapidly using the integrated Office 365 platform. Your inputs are most welcome.

Office 365 is now an established and popular product. I just finished a 6 country tour where I met top 40 customers who are in various stages of deploying Office 365. I have made a list of common mistakes / wrong approaches / misaligned priorities / counterproductive behavior. Read on to ensure that you don’t repeat these mistakes. More importantly, if you have already committed the mistake, the corrective approach is also provided. This series is more relevant to CIO, IT team and the deployment teams.